Thoughts To Ponder On A Monday Morning (edited)

How do we judge our success? How do we end up where we are and how do we figure out where we are going? A commencement address given by FED Chairman Ben Bernanke at Princeton University this weekend is getting rave reviews for its tongue-in-cheek delivery. I read the speech this morning and if you get a chance, read it yourself or at least pass it on to a young person just out of college trying to figure out what being an adult is all about. Come to think of it, give it to any adult trying to figure out what being an adult is all about. It may seem like a bit of a stretch, but on some level these are precisely the questions your members are wrestling with as they plan for the future.

Here are some of my favorite observations from the Chairman:

“Life is amazingly unpredictable; any 22-year-old who thinks he or she knows where they will be in 10 years, much less in 30, is simply lacking imagination.” Does this mean that since our lives are so influenced by chance that planning and striving aren’t worth it? Of course not.

” Whatever life may have in store for you, each of you has a grand, lifelong project, and that is the development of yourself as a human being. . .paraphrasing a Woodrow Wilson School adage from the time I was here, ‘Wherever you go, there you are.’ If you are not happy with yourself, even the loftiest achievements won’t bring you much satisfaction.”

“I think most of us would agree that people who have, say, little formal schooling but labor honestly and diligently to help feed, clothe, and educate their families are deserving of greater respect–and help, if necessary–than many people who are superficially more successful. They’re more fun to have a beer with, too.”

“Economics is a highly sophisticated field of thought that is superb at explaining to policymakers precisely why the choices they made in the past were wrong. About the future, not so much.”